That was a very decent week. From the Nou Camp to Semple Stadium, with a diversion or 12 in between, the sporting fare was largely delicious. One of the finer contributions to the banquet – up there with Neymar, Hannah Tyrrell and TJ Reid – came from BT Sport’s Martin Keown when he attempted to raise the spirits of Arsenal fans following their 10-2-on-aggregate annihilation by Bayern Munich:
“The 10th goal was offside.”
Whether or not that helped it’s hard to say, but it’s always important to try to find silvery linings on the darkest of clouds, otherwise you’d drown in despair. Although Joe Schmidt might struggle to find anything silvery about that trip to Cardiff.
And the lads hadn’t even the excuse of having to kick off at a Saturday time when half the nation is still in their dressing gowns: 11:30am. “It is difficult, especially if you’re not a morning person,” said Fiona Steed, the extent of the difficulty revealed by coach Tom Tierney when he told us that the players had been up since 6:30am.
Worse. “You’re having a pasta and chicken breakfast, which is tough to get around,” Fiona Coghlan told Michael Corcoran, Michael’s subsequent silence an indication that the mere thought of having pasta and chicken for breakfast was having much the same impact on his tummy as on our own.
Grand Slam hopes
But, despite all that, the women prevailed, Tyrrell getting the try that keeps those Grand Slam hopes very much alive-alive-o, their postmatch celebratory meal presumably boiled eggs and soldiers.
Granted, the match wasn’t pretty, unlike the meeting of Tipperary and Kilkenny, which was a thing of ravishing beauty, leaving anyone who opted for Laois v Limerick on eir Sport 1, instead of the Thurles game on eir Sport 2, feeling much like those who switched over to Gogglebox on Wednesday from the Barcelona game after 88 minutes.
“It’s very early in the year for this sort of stuff,” said Anthony Daly, who, like the rest of us, remembers a time when the league was just the thing that passed the days before the championship started. By full-time he’d very nearly mislaid his breath. “It’s surely not the 11th of March – if we got this on the 11th of August we’d be frothing at the mouth,” he frothed.
That was brilliant, then, but our performance of the week award goes to Ted Walsh for his appearance on The Late Late Show, the fella arriving to the strains of My Lovely Horse.
The chief purpose of Ted’s visit was to talk about this week’s Cheltenham festival, but he got a bit sidetracked and began emoting about “health and safety”, as only Ted can.
“It’s gone over the top, especially when you see the programmes on television – Dermot Bannon’s “Home to Improve”, or whatever it is, and he’s there with a helmet on him and a hi-vis jacket and he’s standing out in the middle of the lawn. What in the name of God is going to happen to you in the middle of the lawn? The same thing with the other man who goes up the trees. Is it Duncan? A big helmet and hi-vis jacket and he might only be mowing the lawn.”
(Was he done? God no.)
Common sense
“My place is full of signposts – don’t do this, don’t do that, nothing about common sense. We’re supposed to tell somebody not to stand behind the ramp on the box in case it falls down on top of them. It’s like a fella going down to the Cliffs of Moher and you’re saying ‘don’t jump off the cliff, you might get hurt’.”
(You know, if he stood for election he’d win an overall majority all by himself.)
He finally got around to talking horses, reminiscing about the highlight of his training career when Papillon – now 26 and “hale and hearty” – won the English Grand National. “It’d be like Leitrim or Roscommon winning an All-Ireland final,” he said.
“Is he your friend,” asked Ryan. “He is, yeah. It’s like people – there are people you like and people you don’t like, there are horses you love, horses you like and horses you don’t like. It’s the same way a person can rub you up the wrong way – you look at him and think Jesus, he looks a cranky auld so-and-so, a fella who’d be pestering you a bit or living in your ear.”
He is, he said, dreading the day he has to “call time” on Papillon. But. “However sad I’ll be, I’d be twice as sad if he outlives me.”
One of a kind, that man.
